Book Details

ISBN 139781782177906

Paperback330 pages

Book Description

With increasing interest and enthusiasm for data visualization in the media, businesses are looking to create effective dashboards that engage as well as communicate the truth of data. Tableau makes data accessible to everyone, and is a great way of sharing enterprise dashboards across the business. The deceptively simple Tableau interface hides a variety and complexity of features available for dashboarding, and this book will help you to become familiar with these features.

Tableau offers an easy-to-use and fun way of designing, constructing, and sharing your dashboards. This book will familiarize you with its features and enable you to develop and enhance your dashboard skills, starting with an overview of what dashboard is followed by how you can collect data using various mathematical formulas. Next you'll learn to filter and group data, as well as how to use various functions to present the data in an appealing and accurate way. The book will also teach you how to use the key advanced string functions to play with data and images. You will be walked through the various features of Tableau including dual axes, scatterplot matrices, heat maps, and sizing. Finally, this book will help you consider what to do next with your dashboard, whether it's on a server or in collaboration with other tools.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: A Short Dash to Dashboarding!

Introduction

Preparing for your first dashboard

Showing the power of data visualization

Connecting to data sources

Introducing the Tableau interface

Interacting with your first data visualization

Sharing your visualization with the world

Chapter 2: Summarizing Your Data for Dashboards

Introduction

Arithmetic – the queen of mathematics!

Dashboards and dates

Grouping your data with calculations

Correlation with calculations

Using cross-tabs flexibly

Simplifying your business rules with custom calculations

Chapter 3: Interacting with Data for Dashboards

Introduction

Fun with filters – grouping your data with clarity

Hierarchies for revealing the dashboard message

Classifying your data for dashboards

Actions and interactions

Drilling into the details

Working with input controls

Chapter 4: Using Dashboards to Get Results

Introduction

Enriching data with mashups

Page trails

Guided analytics with Tableau

Sharing your results in a meeting

Notes and annotations

Using external data to enrich your dashboard

Chapter 5: Putting the Dash into Dashboards

Introduction

Choosing your visualization

Using parameters in dashboards

Using custom geocoding in Tableau

Profiting from Big Data to rev your visualization

Filtering your data for focus

Creating choices in dashboards using conditional logic

Chapter 6: Making Dashboards Relevant

Introduction

Adding an infographic to your Tableau dashboard

String manipulation in dashboards

Correcting data exports from Tableau to Excel

Blending data

Optimizing tips for efficient, fast visualization

Chapter 7: Visual Best Practices

Introduction

Coloring your numbers

Dueling with dual axes

Where is the three-dimensional data?

Eating humble pie – Pie charts or not?

Sizing to make a data story

Chapter 8: Tell the World! Share Your Dashboards

Introduction

Packaging workbooks with data

Publishing dashboards to Tableau Server

Publishing dashboards to Tableau Public

Mobilizing your dashboards

Mixing Tableau with SharePoint 2013 Power BI

Wrapping up with R – Dashboards as a tool

What You Will Learn

Customize your designs to meet the needs of your business using Tableau

Use Tableau to prototype, develop, and deploy the final dashboard

Communicate and share your dashboards internally within the business, or externally with the rest of the world via Tableau public

Integrate your data to provide mashed-up dashboards

Be inspired with color, motion, and other design tricks when designing dashboards

Formulate your business rules into Tableau formulae that you can reuse

Consider your business users and data consumer needs as you learn about color theory and psychology and put them into action

Authors

Jen Stirrup

Jen Stirrup, recently named as one of the top nine most influential business intelligence female experts in the world by Solutions Review, is a Microsoft Data. Platform MVP, and PASS Director-At-Large, a well-known business intelligence, and data visualization expert, author, data strategist, and community advocate who has been peer-recognized as one of the top 100 most global influential tweeters on big data and analytics topics.

Specialties: business intelligence, Microsoft SQL Server, Tableau, architecture, data, R, Hadoop, and Hive. Jen is passionate about all things data and business intelligence, helping leaders derive value from data. For two decades, Jen has worked as an artificial intelligence and business intelligence consultant, architecting, delivering, and supporting complex enterprise solutions for customers all over the world.

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